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Ask HN: Is Clojure Dead?

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Re: Ask HN: Is Clojure Dead?

#81

Post by synthc »

actuallyalys wrote: post #72
pyb wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean compared to a few years ago. I tried setting up a new project after 1 or 2 years away from the ecosystem, and struggled a lot : all existing templates to set up new projects (esp. with CLJ/CLJS combined) had bitrotten and were not usable out of the box ; emacs integration no longer working out of the box, etc. I think it's a "death by a 1000 cuts"/"broken windows" that is may be happening when the ecosystem la…

In my experience, the old tools are generally rock solid and are still viable—deps.edn is where a lot of the momentum is going, but Leiningen still works as well as ever. I haven't actually tried to create a new project from an old template recently, but projects I created with old template still run fine. The big exception is ClojureScript. I haven't personally noticed bitrot as much as ClojureScript being generally…

I feel your pain regarding ClojureScript.

A few years back there was a 3 month window where I had everything (lein,fighweel, emacs) configured just right, and I could reliably start a Clojure REPL, a Clojure Script REPL connected to a browser window, and switch between them from emacs.

It was really productive, I could work on the backend parts, frontend parts, and effortly switch between REPLS, but then there were some updates and I never got it working without friction again.

Re: Ask HN: Is Clojure Dead?

#82

Post by joshlemer »

eggsyntax wrote: post #74
johannboehme wrote: post #16

Clojure is definitely not dead. There are active Clojure user groups in most countries (even in my little region) and i still (or even more than ever) stumble uppon cool and exiting projects and libs (e.g. https://github.com/borkdude . It's just incredible what a surplus value this dude alone provides to the ecosystem) Clojure may not have the biggest audience but like others said, it generally focuses more on stabil…

> It's just incredible what a surplus value this dude alone provides to the ecosystem) Seconded; it's pretty jaw-dropping! > The tight feedback loop you have while molding a running program in your editor and the constant dopamine drip feed it causes are just too addictive. Well-said -- I've been needing to write some Python recently, and it's only redoubled my preference for Clojure; the Python shell is a poor subst…

I found it pretty easy to set up a Python REPL in VS Code, which would allow me to do similar things to the Clojure REPL such as highlighting some text in the editor and evaluating. All in all it was pretty close. I guess the only thing that is really different is that it was not connected to the same process I'm debugging, but a different python process. Is that the main thing you're missing?

Re: Ask HN: Is Clojure Dead?

#84

Post by pyb »

synthc wrote: post #81
actuallyalys wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my experience, the old tools are generally rock solid and are still viable—deps.edn is where a lot of the momentum is going, but Leiningen still works as well as ever. I haven't actually tried to create a new project from an old template recently, but projects I created with old template still run fine. The big exception is ClojureScript. I haven't personally noticed bitrot as much as ClojureScript being generally…

I feel your pain regarding ClojureScript. A few years back there was a 3 month window where I had everything (lein,fighweel, emacs) configured just right, and I could reliably start a Clojure REPL, a Clojure Script REPL connected to a browser window, and switch between them from emacs. It was really productive, I could work on the backend parts, frontend parts, and effortly switch between REPLS, but then there were s…

This is the same setup also I've been failing to reproduce.

Re: Ask HN: Is Clojure Dead?

#87

Post by bsder »

dragandj wrote: post #64

I find this hard to believe. I believe you that you haven't see much about Clojure over past 2 years of so. But the cause might be that you simply haven't looked at Clojure in the past 2 years of so. OTOH, I've seen plenty of Clojure in the same 2 years. Perhaps most of news/fuzz is about Rust, but I haven't seen much of that, since I'm not following the news sources that talk about that. In the end, it depends what…

Clojure has probably had its heyday, but it's quite far from dead.

The main issue is that there are other JVM languages nowadays that don't suck--that wasn't the case back in 2009. So, if you wanted the Java ecosystem but didn't want Java, your choices were quite limited. You had Scala (just ... no) and Groovy (oh, hell, no) and ... Clojure.

Since then, Java, itself, has gotten a lot better, and there have become a plethora of JVM languages since. In addition, a lot of languages now have "package managers" like lein. They have also adopted "default const-ness". So, a lot of the issue is that things that were unique to Clojure are no longer that unique in this generation of new languages. Finally, the JVM ecosystem doesn't have the same enterprise pull that it did 10 years ago ... enterprise installations back then only had the JVM, while now you can generally count on a version of Python also being installed.

Computer language adoption is slow in spite of what everybody thinks. Pick a language that you can use as a tool for the future, and don't worry too much as long as it isn't actively un-popular. You'll have to learn a new computer language about once every 15 years anyway.

Re: Ask HN: Is Clojure Dead?

#88

Post by yenda »

pyb wrote: post #84
synthc wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel your pain regarding ClojureScript. A few years back there was a 3 month window where I had everything (lein,fighweel, emacs) configured just right, and I could reliably start a Clojure REPL, a Clojure Script REPL connected to a browser window, and switch between them from emacs. It was really productive, I could work on the backend parts, frontend parts, and effortly switch between REPLS, but then there were s…

This is the same setup also I've been failing to reproduce.

Are you using shadow-cljs?

Re: Ask HN: Is Clojure Dead?

#89

Post by masukomi »

> PS: Asking because I want to delve into a functional language but I cannot bring myself to do this seriously if it doesn't translate into market value.

learn a functional language because you want to learn a functional language. Learn whatever one sparks your interest.

It doesn't matter what one you learn because NONE of them have notable share in the job market. If you learn _any_ functional language you'll have a leg up on other applicants for _any_ functional language job because hardly anyone bothers to learn them. Also, there are so few jobs in functional programming that you're unlikely to get one anyway. So, again, just learn what you want to learn.

Re: Ask HN: Is Clojure Dead?

#90

Post by yenda »

jmartin2683 wrote: post #21

Closure is weird if you’re not already into lisps (I know, I know our fathers’ parentheses). It’s not easy to just pick up and start solving problems, because everything feels foreign. I don’t know if it’s dead or not, as I’m sure people still love to use it… it just doesn’t have any major upside that’d make me want to adopt it. Rust, as you’ve mentioned, is the opposite… huge upside out of the box and easy to adopt,…

The lisp syntax was my original reason to accept Clojure. You might need a few days to get used to it, but it is far less than any other syntax, and it quickly falls into your muscle memory in a way no other syntax can. Within weeks you master a handful of basic parens manipulation that are all you need to edit and navigate code. That means that you are 100% focus on implementing your solution to a problem instead of switching between doing that and crafting your solution into an alien syntax, assisted by an ide
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